


becoming the man I wanted to marry

by Anonymous



Category: Alternate Universe Works, Mulan (1998)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Sexism, Crossdressing, F/F, Family Dynamics, Gen, Military Uniforms, Mistaken Identity, Off-screen Character Death, Secret Identity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:47:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26925349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: 4 women Shang might have been, and the women who saved China.
Relationships: Fa Mulan | Hua Mulan/Li Shang (Disney)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 41
Collections: Anonymous, Trick or Treat Exchange 2020





	becoming the man I wanted to marry

**Author's Note:**

  * For [reconditarmonia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reconditarmonia/gifts).



> Title from a quote by Gloria Steinem. The character death occurs off-screen in AU #2, please see end notes for specific spoiler if desired.
> 
> 11/1/2020: Ending edited. Please accept some lesbians and my most sincere apologies.

**1.**  
When the drums started pounding, Mulan thought it was her own heart first, but then her father rose and went to see what was happening. Mulan peered over the wall. There were three men on horses, a small one flanked by two soldiers. The short one wore blue and a look of deep disgust on his face.

"By the proclamation of the Emperor," he began, and then looked around at the men assembled before him. He sighed.

"By the proclamation of the Emperor -- _and_ the request of General Li, the army is assembling an all-female regiment. Against my strong advice," he said, his lips pursed in disgust.

From the crowd, there arose horrified murmurs. Mulan scrambled to get a better grip on the slick shingles so she could hear. Surely she had heard wrongly. A female regiment? That'd never happened in the history of China!

"Due to understanding that women have delicate sensibilities," he went on, clearing his throat, "this is a volunteer regiment. I'm sure you have no willing daughters. Women should be concerned with their house, not war! So I'll move on."

Mulan's heart was pounding in her throat. She shot out of the gate, past her mother and grandmother and father, ignoring her father trying to catch her sleeve.

"I'll go," she said. "I'll go and bring honor to my family."

Chi-Fu sniffed. "I doubt it."

"Welcome aboard," the closest soldier said, reaching down to her, and Mulan's eyes went wide with surprise. The speaker was a woman! She hadn't looked closely until that moment. The female soldier seemed tall on her horse, her armor fitted in a way that hid her feminine features. She had beautiful eyes though, and a bright, clear voice.

Mulan accepted the scroll that the woman handed her without resistance, caught in the woman's sharp gaze.

"I'm Li Shang," the soldier said. Chi-Fu huffed.

"It's bad enough that your father agreed to let you do this. Now you've got _volunteers_?!" he said, waving his arms in the air dramatically. Mulan thought he was in danger of falling off his horse; he wasn't a rider like she was, having spent many hours on Khan's back from childhood.

"Looks like," Shang said, sounding satisfied, and although her mother cried and her father said _nothing_ to her, refused to say a word, Mulan left with them.

*

**2.**

The sun was just peeking over the horizon, but Mulan had been up for hours. She had hooked Khan to the plow just like her father had taught her, and she had her straw hat on her head, just like her mother always insisted. There was dirt under her fingernails -- dirt everywhere -- and Mulan thought that if the matchmaker could see her now, she'd forbid Mulan from even looking at any man in the village.

But Mulan had no cousins, no uncles, no grandfather, and someone needed to till this field. Only until her father returned, of course. Then she would try again to find a husband, and he could help her father till the fields instead.

"Excuse me?" someone called up to her, and she started in surprise, realizing that she and Khan had drifted to a stop -- and that the row behind them wasn't the straightest, either. She sighed and pushed her hat back on her head, looking down at the person.

Mulan had thought the speaker was a woman, but the person wore clean armor and an officer's cape. They held a helmet in their hands, and Mulan knew that helmet. She had seen it so many times when she sneaked into her father's wardrobe. It was all she could see then, past the tears blurring her vision, the ache in her throat rising into a keen.

She slid from the horse, her hands reaching, and the person gave over the helmet.

"I'm sorry," the person said, "to bring you this news."

She bowed deeply and this time Mulan was sure -- the speaker was a woman. She could tell then, her figure slimmer than a man's would be, her hair tied up and her face soft.

"Are you a woman soldier?" Mulan asked, her voice cracking in sorrow and disbelief. She clutched at the woman's shoulder, felt her shoulder pad, all while clutching her father's helmet so tightly that she would later find blood on her palm. 

"Yes," the soldier said, surprised. "People don't usually--"

Mulan really started crying then, and it took her saying it three times before the soldier understood.

"I should have gone, I should have gone, _I should have gone_ \--"

"Li Zhao was an exceptional soldier. It was an honor to serve with him," the soldier said, clearly not knowing how to respond to this. She scratched the back of her neck.

Mulan turned towards the house and began to run. The soldier ran after her.

"No one answered at the house, I'm so sorry--" the soldier yelled after her; then, "What am I doing?"

Mulan wasn't listening. Her world had narrowed to the helmet under her arm and memories of the fight that she'd had with her dad the day before he left for war.

She'd never get to apologize. She should have done what she hadn't quite dared -- she should have gone instead.

*

**3.**

"You know," Ling said, "they say that there's a female soldier in this camp."

Mulan stopped breathing. Yao laughed, slapping his leg.

"No way," he said. "Women are too delicate for war."

"It's true," Chien-Po said. "She's General Li's only child. He raised her like a son. I've heard about her before."

"Whaaaat?" Mushu grumbled from under her shirt. "Why'd we do all this work--?" Mulan hushed him.

"That's crazy," Ling said. "What man would ever marry a woman like that? He might not have had a son of his own, but that's the end of his family line for sure."

Mulan forced out a laugh. "No kidding!" she said. "A female warrior? How -- how -- ridiculous!"

The men said nothing, looking at her.

"It's unbelievable, right, boys?" she said, desperate for response. Then she felt a hand take her elbow and twist her around.

"I don't need anyone causing trouble in my camp," the captain said, her feet planted wide, and she stared up at Mulan, daring her to challenge. Mulan gulped. The captain wore the same armor as any other officer, sized down for her delicate frame, her hair pinned up in the most practical manner, out of her face. She was the kind of woman that Mulan never thought she could be, naturally delicate, instead of tall and gawky and clumsy.

"Yes, captain," Mulan whispered. Shang's eyes narrowed.

"I, uh -- I just wasn't expecting you," Mulan went on, her mouth moving faster than her brain, "to be a -- to be a girl?" She hated the way her voice raised over the sentence.

Shang folded her arms. "I don't see any men here," she shouted, loud enough for the entire group to hear. "I could defeat each of you in hand-to-hand combat without breaking a sweat. Anyone want to try me? Go ahead."

Ling elbowed Yao, who elbowed him back, and when he stepped forward out of the line, Shang knocked Yao to his knees with a few practiced movements. Mulan just watched.

"You wanna try me?" Shang said, meeting her eyes. Mulan gulped and shook her head.

*

**4.**

Mulan didn't even feel the blow in her rush to escape the avalanche and the Huns. Adrenaline was like that; she knew deep in her bones what she had to do, and anything else was a distraction.

Including, apparently, being stabbed.

After that all she could focus on was escape and Shang's hand escaping her grasp. She tried so hard to hold on, but the snow pushed against Khan, relentlessly, an ocean of white waves. Then she found him and against all odds the soldiers rescued him, and then, only then, did her body fail her.

She awoke confused, not knowing if it was night or day in the tent, not remembering where a tent had come from. But Shang was there. So that part of her fever dream had at least been true. She'd thought a medic had come, that there had been humming and ripping and binding and someone saying, "I can't believe it…"

"I can explain," she said, seeing the shocked judgment in his eyes.

"Stay here," he said without another word, and he left the tent.

Mulan felt like she didn't have much choice. Where could she go that she wouldn't be found out here? She wasn't even sure she could stand. She waited, the blanket tucked up high around her bandages, as if anyone could look at her now, out of armor, and see anything but a woman pretending.

And then Shang came back. He leaned down on his haunches next to her and said, "Okay. The medic said he would tell no one. And from what I could tell after one… very awkward conversation with your friends, no one else knows."

"What?" Mulan asked, surprised.

Shang wouldn't meet her eyes. He sighed. He glanced back towards the front of the tent, and then his brow furrowed.

"You picked the worst place to be wounded, you know," he said, shaking his head. "If he'd slashed your arm or something no one would have noticed. People don't look closely at a man in uniform. They see what they think is there."

He stood up then, wiping snow from his legs, and said, "I've gotten away with it for a long time."

There was a long moment of silence as Mulan tried to process this. There was nothing she could see feminine in him -- in her? Surely he hadn't meant what he said.

"Your father had no son, did he?" Shang asked, darting a glance at her. It was as if he couldn't bear to look at her for long, and she hated his reaction so much.

"He has a bad leg!" she said, immediately defensive, and Shang's smile took her by surprise.

"And a brave daughter," he said. "We have to keep marching, but you won't be able to keep up. Please join us in the city as you are able. I'll leave your horse and some supplies."

"Thank you," she said, just as Chi-Fu poked his nose through the curtain.

"Well, is he dead?" Chi-Fu demanded.

"Ping? No way," Shang said. "He's the toughest soldier I have. Let him rest, Chi-Fu."

He pushed Chi-Fu out of the tent, his hand gripping Chi-Fu's shoulder hard. Then he ducked his head back inside, grinning.

"You'll have to meet the others," he said.

*

**1.**

They were sitting in the garden, flower petals falling in the space carefully cultivated between them. There'd been so much to talk about at first -- the work they'd done to save their country, the kind gifts that the Emperor had sent to both their houses, and their experiences in camp. Mulan kept sneaking glances at Shang, seeing how the soft line of Shang's hanfu did nothing to hide the strength in her arms. Shang's paint was inexpertly applied, as if done in a great hurry, perhaps on horseback. It was charming, Mulan thought. And silly. They'd fought a battle together. They'd seen each other's true selves. She didn't know why she was hesitating.

After the well of their shared experience ran dry, an awkward silence set in. Mulan fiddled with a fallen flower. Shang coughed once, as if she were about to say something, and then a second time, as if nothing had occurred.

"You -- you didn't know, right?" Mulan said finally, unable to hold the question back. "Until I got hurt, you had no idea."

"No idea!" Shang said immediately. "Ah. Mulan, I-- my mother died in childbirth and my father never remarried. There weren't a lot of women in my life, growing up. I had to forge my own path." Shang was fiddling with her sleeves awkwardly. She picked up her helmet and tucked it under her arm, which seemed to make her feel better.

"Which isn't to say, umm, that is -- now, I'd never --" Shang sighed. "Sorry, I've never been good at this. Talking to people. But it was so easy to talk to you. So I thought--"

"You know, you can just think of me as Ping, if you want. If that makes it easier," Mulan said. Perhaps that was the source of this problem. She didn't mind thinking of Shang as a woman, but maybe Shang minded _Mulan_ being one. It would be just her luck. She never felt comfortable in her skin with anyone except her family, and Shang.

"That ship has sailed," Shang said, and the look in her eye made Mulan blush. If Shang had been someone else in the end, after an experience like they had had -- she thought it couldn't have mattered to her. She would have loved Shang either way. She had to give her the same chance. Mulan took a deep breath.

"Let's start again then," she said. "I always seem to make the wrong impression, anyway."

She rose and bowed to Shang. "I'm Fa Mulan," she said.

Shang rose and bowed deeper.

"The savior of China," she said, and she heard the wonder in her voice, the respect, and treasured it more than the Emperor's seal.

**Author's Note:**

> SPOILER for AU 2: Zhou dies. :(


End file.
